Harlequin

Harlequin (1980)

Are His Powers More Than Magic?

Up-and-coming senator Nick Rast's young son is terminally ill with leukemia. A mysterious faith healer, Gregory Wolfe, appears and seems to cure the boy. Rast's wife Sandy falls in love with Wolfe, but the powerful interests behind Rast's career, represented by geriatric monster Doc Wheelan are less happy with events.

Date of release
1980-03-28
TMDB
6.3 / 10 (53)
Runtime
1h 36m
Genres
Drama, Fantasy, Horror, Mystery
Director
Simon Wincer

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Box office: A$1.2M
  • Budget: A$800K
  • Earned 1.5× its budget
  • Awards: 2 · Nominations: 4. Including: Sitges Film Festival Best Screenplay award; Sitges Film Festival Best cinematography

Harlequin is a 1980 Australian fantasy thriller film directed by Simon Wincer and starring Robert Powell, Carmen Duncan, David Hemmings and Broderick Crawford. The film is a modern-day retelling of the historical figure Rasputin.

Production

Simon Wincer and Everett De Roche had previously collaborated on Snapshot but were not happy with the film since it was made so hurriedly. They decided to make another film, came up with six ideas and eventually chose The Minister's Musician, a modern-day version of the Rasputin story. They did a treatment and Antony I. Ginnane became involved as producer.

Everett de Roche originally did a 400-page first draft in which the central character, Gregory Wolfe, was a priest. When the producers sent the script to the US, they were worried that this would make the film hard to market in Catholic countries so it was changed. The script was given to some American writers to work on but Wincer was not happy with the changes.

The script was written with David Bowie in mind for the lead role and conversations were had with Bowie but the filmmakers got "cold feet" at the last minute and cast Robert Powell. The original choice for the role of the senator was Orson Welles but he wanted $80,000 a week for two weeks so Broderick Crawford was cast instead.

It was the first film funded by the newly formed West Australian Film Council. Funding also came from the Australian Film Commission, Greater Union, Ace Theatres of Western Australia and Pact Productions, with the final $50,000 coming from Hemdale. It was the first of several films Ginnane would make with Hemdale.

The movie was shot in late 1979 over six weeks, using Panavision. It was filmed in Western Australia because of the involvement of the West Australian Film Council, which was estimated to save the production $100,000.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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